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" Poetry privileges music and is aesthetically more challenging. Prose privileges information and is emotionally more challenging. "

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" I don't think I look like the pope's favorite Catholic - at least not under close scrutiny. "

" The truth is when I went to graduate school I would've said I was among the least talented of the students, I was certainly the least smart, or less educated. But I worked very hard. "

" Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. "

" I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look. "

" I believe in God, but even if you don't, you can believe in a self, the person who is innately who you are. Once you fully become that person, then everything you do will be blessed. "

" I think the problem with visual media like TV is that they're reductive. "

" Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it. "

" The thing I have to do as a writer, and that God permits me to do, is that I have to be willing to fail. "

" I've been teaching classes on memoirs since 1986, and I've been reading them all my life, and I think that I would like to write a critical book that might have some of those how-to elements in it. "

" For days on end, I avoid the Web, never logging in until about two or three, after I've written all morning. On a good week, I don't go online till after Wednesday, so four or five days might lapse without my checking e-mail. "

" There are all kinds of things God wants me to do that I'm very obstreperous about. "

" The failures of other genres to provide an emotional connection with some of their characters and narratives gives memoir a toehold. "

" I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years. "

Overnight Success

" I've never contended that I had a really horrible life. "

" My idea of art is, you write something that makes people feel so strongly that they get some conviction about who they want to be or what they want to do. It's morally useful not in a political way, but it makes your heart bigger; it's emotionally and spiritually empowering. "

" People who didn't live pre-Internet can't grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. The only bookstores sold Bibles the size of coffee tables and dashboard Virgin Marys that glowed in the dark. "

" I'm always terrified when I'm writing. "

" I think we fall in love and become adults and become citizens in a way by writing stories about ourselves. "

" I have a completely addictive personality. Diet Coke is my last - God, I know people counting days off Diet Coke; I'm such a Diet Cokehead. Now I won't let myself buy it. "

" There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety. "

" I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient! "

" If dysfunction means that a family doesn't work, then every family ambles into some arena in which that happens, where relationships get strained or even break down entirely. We fail each other or disappoint each other. That goes for parents, siblings, kids, marriage partners - the whole enchilada. "

" Having a great dad probably permitted me to pal around with guys in a way that some women don't. "

" Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down. "

" Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself. "

" When people suffer, their relationships usually suffer as well. Period. And we all suffer because, as the Buddha says, that's the nature of being human and wanting stuff we don't always get. "

" The audiobooks I buy are never first-time reads - only rereadings of books I know well that I find intoxicating. "

" I do have a really good memory. I mean, like, I can remember all the phone numbers of everybody on the street I grew up on. "

" Writing about prayer to a secular audience is tap-dancing on the radio. I want to say, 'Gee whiz, isn't this great,' and have everyone's head cocked like the RCA dog. "

" Both my parents were agnostic. My mother was kind of a Buddhist. She had some spiritual tendencies, but they were kind of flaky - New Agey, you know? Which is partly why I'm suspicious of that sort of thing. I'm skeptical of any spiritual practice that doesn't involve other people and doesn't involve some sort of consistent tradition. "